Bastareaud says France have nearly hit bottom

REACTION: "We've pretty much hit bottom," Mathieu Bastareaud, the French centre said after Les Bleus ended their November internationals with a 23-23 draw against Japan.

It could have been worse - Japan would have won Saturday's match if Yu Tamura had not missed a kick in the 73rd minute.

"We should have lost. We were lucky that they missed that conversion from pretty much in front of the posts," Bastareaud said, with the jeers of fans at the U Arena in the Paris suburbs still ringing in his ears.

"It feels bad to be whistled in our own stadium, but that's how it is."

France have lost to New Zealand before going down 17-18 to South Africa. Then came Saturday's near-disaster against the fast-improving Japanese, who will host the 2019 World Cup.

Bastareaud's teammates agreed, while struggling to express their feelings.

"I don't know what to say anymore," said prop Rabah Slimani.

"It's hard to find words," said Louis Picamoles, the veteran No. 8, adding that France had not played at an international level "in execution or rapidity."

"We have a lot of work ahead of us," Noves said after the match. "I have the impression that we have really lost confidence which is having a huge impact on our play."

Yet Noves insisted that he could see potential.

"At the level of results the balance sheet is not positive but in terms of evaluating players there are still things we can take away. Some of the players showed an interesting level of play, other less so."

"It's been a complicated November, trying to carry on in a normal manner under intense pressure from certain people which helped make the players a little pensive.
That led to very poor displays like this one."

Bastareaud said the players "will go back to our clubs and try to change our thinking because these autumn internationals are very difficult to take for everyone.

"We cannot do worse than we are doing," the 29-year-old Toulon player said.

"We need to rediscover some of the confidence which this team has completely lost."